Theories of crime causation

Crime

Kirkpatrick (2005) in the New York Times writes about the passage of a law to address the issue of gang activity to increase "federal efforts to fight street gangs and imposing new mandatory minimum sentences for gang-related crimes" (para. 1) the reason for the law is first that gang activity in America's cities has reached such high proportions, with a great deal of violence involved, and often centering on drug activities. In addition, there is the perception that the cities have not been able to do as much as is needed to address the problem and face a growing threat from heavily armed gangs.

The law will of several establish minimum penalties to replace the mandatory sentencing guidelines struck down last year by the Supreme Court. The law also offers a new definition of a the legislation revises the legal definition of a "criminal street gang" as consisting of at least five (in the old law) to at least three (in the new) people who have committed at least two crimes together, at least one of those a violent crime. The law further imposes minimum sentences beginning at 10 years in jail for any violent crime.

The law was not passed without opposition, for the Democrats noted first that the imposition of mandatory sentences fall most heavily on Blacks and Hispanics, and they also noted that street violence and murder are already illegal. It is also not clear from this article what role the federal authorities will have in prosecuting street gangs in most cities. The law may allow federal authorities to instigate prosecutions against the gang as a whole rather than to investigate individual crimes, which would be left to city and state authorities.

Social Process Theory is applicable to the development and activities of gangs of this sort, with the specific dimension of deviance being identified as a causal element. Social process theory considers the actions of both formal and informal social institutions and tries to account for socialization within family and peer groups, the educational process, and the justice system. According to Schoeman (2002), social process theory includes three sub-theories of learning, control, and development:

These theories explore crime and delinquency from a perspective whereby the cause of criminal behavior is searched for within a person's life course development. Attention is also given to everyday interaction with the environment and society (Schoeman, 2002, p. 130).

Deviance is an expression of a degree of stigmatization of a sub-population by the majority population. The sub-population is separated on the basis of some difference, a difference that is emphasized by the majority population in identifying the deviant population. The sub-population learns from this ongoing process and reacts accordingly, seeking a sense of community in its own group, perhaps as a challenge to the majority population that has started the process. One of the interesting aspects of the sociology of deviance, as Erikson (1966) notes, is that the deviant behavior can itself contribute to a sense of belonging and a sense of community among a certain population in two ways -- it can create a bond between those who exhibit the deviant behavior, and it creates a strong bond among those who oppose that behavior:

The deviant act, then, creates a sense of mutuality among the people of a community by supplying a focus for group feeling. Like a war, a flood, or some other emergency, deviance makes people more alert to the interests they share in common and draws attention to those values which constitute the "collective conscience" of the community (Erikson, 1966, p. 4).

Deviance is not a specific behavior common to all cultures. Every culture may identify some behavior as deviant, but a given behavior will not be defined as deviant in all cultures:

Deviance" refers to conduct which the people of a group consider so dangerous or embarrassing or irritating that they bring special sanctions to bear against the persons who exhibit it. Deviance is not a property inherent in any particular kind of behavior; it is a property conferred upon that behavior by the people who come into direct or indirect contact with it (Erikson, 1966, p. 6).

Erikson suggests that the deviance identified by a community says something about the boundaries that community sets for itself. He notes that both the conformist and the deviant are created by the same forces in the community, for the two complement one another. Indeed, Erikson says that deviance and conformity are much alike, so much so that they appear in a community at exactly those points where deviant behavior is most feared:

Men who fear witches soon find themselves surrounded by them; men become jealous of private property soon encounter eager thieves (Erikson, 1966, p. 22).

The interactionist or labeling perspective examines those social and psychological processes that take place among actors, audiences, and third parties in terms of their impact upon the personal and social-public identity of the actor (Kelly, 1979, p. 49). Tannenbaum (1979) describes the process as a dramatic one by which the deviant is so labeled by the community and begins to act out deviant behavior. Tannenbaum describes the process in terms of a delinquent:

It cannot be too often emphasized that for the child the whole situation has become different. He now lives in a different world. He has been tagged. A new and hitherto non-existent environment has been precipitated out for him (Tannenbaum, 1979, p. 162).